In the field of test equipment, it is a problem to efficiently generate an output data stream that emulates the diverse statistical patterns of real world data transmissions. This is especially pertinent in the field of data communications for remotely located devices wherein the equipment must be operational under adverse conditions, and responsive to various patterns of input data traffic. In order to exhaustively test such equipment, diverse patterns of data traffic as well as varying traffic loads must be simulated to ensure that the equipment is operational under the conditions that exist in their installed environment.
The present state of the industry is that a large segment of the equipment manufacturers do not believe that the emulation of various patterns of real world data transmissions is either practical or effective to test their equipment. This segment of the industry typically field tests their equipment in real-world situations to thereby ascertain whether the equipment is properly functioning. A significant limitation of this approach is that unusual patterns of traffic are typically not encountered during the test phase and the equipment is therefore not thoroughly tested. In addition, the user does not have any control over the loads presented to the equipment. Thus, this method of testing essentially defers the identification of subtle problems to the customer detection of inoperability of the equipment.
An alternative test approach is to analyze the equipment based upon a theoretical analysis of the design. This analytical approach uses standard models of traffic generated by standards or industry research bodies, such as Bellcore, to review the efficacy of the equipment design. The standard models of traffic can provide accurate traffic data, but the limitation of this approach is that the accuracy of the analysis is limited to the ability of the researcher to compute traffic loads for a small number of statistical patterns. In addition, the interaction among various loads and the use of unpredictable loads are typically not reviewed due to the overwhelming computational load presented by such an analysis.
In summary, the problem with testing data communication and data processing equipment in the field of data communications is that there is no test equipment available to generate traffic loads that can be varied by the user to test equipment under widely varying traffic conditions. This is especially pertinent in the case of equipment which is connected to a transmission medium that carries multiplexed data traffic.